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hi im planning a two dimensional traditional animation piece, im wondering on hardware, i am planning on setting up with a digi camera on a rig(taking a snap of each page) with lighting and registration pegs etc could i get some advise on what is the latest method (homemade) do i need to set up a rig? or will a scanner do the job or both camera and scanner whats the basic things i need? cheers guys'n'gals

frontjibi

10-21-2005, 07:12 PM

Are you trying to do clay modeling kind of animation?

Well for me, i work with both, 3d and 2d at the same time. At school, i am working on 2-d animation. I use Flash mx for it. I also work with photoshop at school. At home, i work with Maya for 3-d animation. I think it's good that you have experience with both aspects.

DaveW

10-23-2005, 09:25 PM

There is a free pencil tester for the PC called Monkey Jam, you can use it with a cheap webcam; you can use a make-shift rig for this if you want, it's probably a good idea. For your final work though, I suggest using a scanner and something like ToonBoom Studio to do the ink and paint and camera moves. Depending on your project, you might be able to get away with using the cheaper version called ToonBoom Studio Express. You can do ink and paint in Flash too, but it's not as well suited to this type of work as ToonBoom is. If you can find it, Mustek made a large A3 sized scanner for about $170 which is dirt cheap for a scanner that size. The color sucks, but you'd just be using it to scan in pencil drawings and it's big enough to scan 12 field animation paper.

pollywoggles

10-24-2005, 05:25 AM

I used to do traditional on paper, then scan the images for pencil tests. I definately miss the crackle and flutter of paper between my fingers -- but for me, it's so much faster to use a tablet directly into an animation program (I use Bauhaus' Mirage). But then again, I only do traditional animation as a way of quickly blocking-out a 3D animation.

SFR75

10-24-2005, 12:48 PM

And how did you find Bauhause Mirage ? I've played a little bit - it looked pretty powerfull to me.

pollywoggles

11-13-2005, 11:20 AM

When I started looking for 2d software I looked at everything -- but I had very specific critieria--

It had to fit my budget: less than $1000 (which eliminated super high-end programs such as Toonz); it had to fit my style of drawing, i.e. non-vector-based (eliminating programs like Toon Boom and Tabs); it had to be still in business and putting out regular upgrades (which surprisingly, really narrowed the choices).

Finally, I wanted something that had good painting tools and that gave me the ability to simulate flipping the drawings (in Mirage, I draw with one hand -- while my other hand rests on the arrow keys). Odd thing is that a lot of animation programs have an onion-skin feature (which I don't like), but *not* a tool that simulates flipping with the non-drawing hand.

Sorry for the long explanation, I hope I somewhat made sense.

Rabid pitbull

11-18-2005, 12:41 AM

Dont forget pap plastic animation paper, very nice nonvector animation tool. But be careful to check the feature list, the base model does not offer very good tools for retiming animation. Personally I like to use toonboom studio, fast good toolset priced well.

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